Chapter 3 - HARBORVIEW EMERGENCY
The sterile white lights of Harborview Medical Center’s emergency trauma bay smelled of antiseptic, latex, and the metallic tang of oxygen tanks.
Sloan was behind a heavy beige curtain in Trauma Bay 4. A team of attending physicians and neurology residents had swarmed her the moment the ambulance doors swung open, hooking her up to an array of monitors that beeped with a steady, rhythmic pulse—beep... beep... beep...—that kept Griffin’s fractured nerves from completely unraveling.
Griffin stood outside the curtain in the narrow corridor.
He had placed Hazel and Iris in a private family consultation room down the hall, guarded by two of his corporate security operatives—massive men in dark suits who looked out of place among the vending machines and plastic chairs of a public hospital. He had ordered them dinner from a high-end downtown restaurant, though he knew neither child would touch a bite.
Now, he paced the hallway like a caged wolf, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his jaw set in a hard, unyielding line.
The attending physician, a gray-haired woman with tired eyes and a gold badge reading Dr. Evelyn Vance, pushed through the curtain and stepped into the corridor, wiping her hands with a paper towel.
Griffin was in front of her before she could take a second step.
“Condition?” he demanded.
Dr. Vance looked up at him, taking in the expensive cut of his sweater, the fierce intelligence in his dark eyes, and the unmistakable aura of absolute power that clung to him. She didn't flinch. In the ER, titles meant nothing; she treated billionaires and homeless men with the exact same clinical detachment.
“She’s stable, Mr. Drake,” Dr. Vance said, tossing the paper towel into a nearby bin. “Exhaustion-induced cerebral ischemia combined with acute systemic dehydration. In plain English: she hasn't slept a full night in weeks, she’s been running on black coffee and sheer willpower, and her blood pressure bottomed out because her body simply rebelled.”
Griffin exhaled a breath he felt like he’d been holding since 2:47 AM. “Can I see her?”
“She’s still unconscious from the sedative we gave her to stabilize her heart rate. She’ll sleep for another two hours. But Mr. Drake... there’s something else you need to know.”
Griffin’s body went instantly taut. “What?”
Dr. Vance crossed her arms, leaning slightly against the wall. “While we were running the blood panels and neurological scans, we found old scar tissue. Chronic micro-fractures in her right wrist and ribs that healed improperly. And her nutritional panels show a history of prolonged caloric deficit.”
Griffin’s vision darkened at the edges.
Sloan.
The woman he had loved—the woman he had given the world to, or tried to, until she slammed the door in his face—had been living a life of quiet, grinding poverty while he sat in a penthouse overlooking Elliott Bay, multiplying his net worth by the millions every quarter.
“Is she going to recover fully?” Griffin asked, his voice dangerously low.
“Physically? Yes, with three weeks of mandatory bed rest, proper nutrition, and zero stress. Which brings me to my next point, Mr. Drake.” Dr. Vance looked him dead in the eye. “Who are those two little girls in the family room?”
“They’re her daughters,” Griffin said.
“Your daughters?”
Griffin didn't answer immediately. He stared past Dr. Vance’s shoulder, through a small window in the beige curtain where he could see the steady rise and fall of Sloan’s chest under the hospital blanket.
“They’re my daughters,” Griffin repeated, the words tasting strange, terrifying, and sacred all at once on his tongue. “They were born eight years ago. She never told me.”
Dr. Vance studied his face for a long moment, reading the shock, the fury, and the devastating realization carved into his features.
“Well, Mr. Drake,” the doctor said softly, patting his arm once before walking down the hall toward the nurses’ station. “I suggest you figure out how to explain that to her when she wakes up. Because if she crashes like that again while those little girls are watching, her heart might not take the bounce.”
Griffin stood alone in the quiet corridor for a full minute.
Then he turned and walked toward the family consultation room at the end of the hall.
When he pushed the door open, the room was dimly lit by a single floor lamp.
Hazel and Iris were sitting side by side on a green vinyl sofa that was far too big for them. The box of high-end takeout sushi and chicken skewers Griffin had sent up sat untouched on the coffee table.
Hazel was holding her stuffed rabbit so tightly its glass eye was nearly popping out. Iris was staring out the window at the rainy Seattle street below, her small jaw set in that exact, stubborn angle that Griffin knew so well from looking in the mirror every morning.
They looked up as the door clicked shut.
“Is she awake?” Iris asked instantly.
“Not yet,” Griffin said, walking over and sitting down on a low stool directly in front of them. He rested his elbows on his knees, looking between the two identical faces that held his entire future in their dark, suspicious eyes. “The doctor said she’s going to be fine. She just needs to sleep.”
Hazel let out a long, shuddering sigh of relief, her shoulders slumping. “Thank goodness.”
Griffin reached out, hesitating for a fraction of a second before resting his large hand gently on top of Hazel’s dark curls. She didn't pull away; instead, she leaned slightly into his palm, seeking the warmth she had been denied her entire life.
“Hazel. Iris,” Griffin said, his voice steady and low. “We need to talk.”
Iris crossed her arms over her yellow t-shirt. “About what? About why you look like Mom’s secret pictures?”
Griffin let out a dry, humorless chuckle. “About that, yes. And about why your mother never told you who I am.”
Hazel looked up at him, her dark eyes wide and full of a precocious, heartbreaking wisdom. “Did Mom hate you?”
The question hit Griffin in the chest like a physical blow.
Did Sloan hate him?
He had spent ten years asking himself that exact question every single night. Had she left because of his ambition? Because of the cold, calculating world he built around himself? Because she realized too late that the man she fell in college with had transformed into a corporate warlord?
“No, Hazel,” Griffin said, his voice thick with an emotion he couldn't quite conceal. “Your mother didn't hate me. At least... I don't think she did. We had a disagreement a long time ago. A very big disagreement. And she made a choice to protect herself—and, as I’m realizing now, to protect you.”
“From what?” Iris demanded, her tone sharp and uncompromising. “From being rich? Because our apartment has a leaky roof and Mom spends all night drawing houses for people who pay her late.”
Griffin stared at his daughter, stunned by the sheer, razor-sharp intelligence in her voice. She was eight years old, yet she spoke with the analytical precision of a seasoned litigator.
“From my world,” Griffin said softly. “My world is dangerous, Iris. It’s full of people who want to use everything you love to get to you. When your mother left, I was... I was a very different man than I am today. I was angry. I was reckless. If she had stayed, or if I had known about you...”
He stopped. He couldn't finish the sentence. If he had known about them, he would have locked them in a fortress, surrounded them by armed guards, and terrified them with his own overbearing need for control.
Sloan had known that.
She had known that Griffin Drake would have consumed their lives, turning his daughters into leverage in his corporate wars. So she had packed a single suitcase, walked out into the rain, and erased herself from his universe.
“Are you going to take us away from her?” Hazel whispered, her lower lip trembling again. “Are you going to put us in a big glass building like the ones downtown?”
Griffin reached out, taking both of their small hands in his. His grip was firm, warm, and absolute.
“Listen to me,” Griffin said, looking from Hazel to Iris, making sure they saw the absolute truth in his eyes. “I spent ten years looking for your mother. I never stopped. Not for one day. And now that I’ve found you three, I am never, ever going away. But I promise you—on everything I own, on my life—we are going to do this together. Your mother, you two, and me.”
Iris stared at him for a long, measuring moment, weighing his words the way an architect weighs the load-bearing capacity of a steel beam.
Then, slowly, she nodded.
“Okay,” Iris said. “But if you make Mom cry, I know how to hack the Wi-Fi router in your office building and shut down all your computers.”
May you like
Griffin actually laughed—a real, genuine sound that surprised even him.
“Deal,” Griffin said. “Fair trade.”
